CES 2012 News Roundup

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This post was contributed by Simon from Best Mobile Contracts, the leading UK mobile phone comparison website.

The annual Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas is always worth keeping an eye on, because it’s often the first look at the new technologies we can expect to see on the high street for the rest of the year. We take a look at the most exciting highlights of the 2012 show.

 

Huawei Ascend P1S’s Smashes Into The Market

Huawei isn’t exactly a known name in phones, at least in the West, but the Ascend P1S is going to get everyone talking about it. It’s incredibly slim, at just 6.68mm thick, but boasts a high-end specification including a 1.5 GHz dual-core processor running Android 4.0, a 4.3 inch screen, 8 megapixel camera, 5.1 surround sound, a solid 1 GB of RAM, and 4 GB of storage space. The Ascend P1S’s sleek good looks come in three colour options, black, pink, or white. Huawei is the biggest phone manufacturer in China, with massive factories and a huge market presence there.

 

Lenovo’s Intel Smartphone

Lenovo, best known for manufacturing what used to be IBM’s ThinkPad brand of reliable, matt-black business laptops, have made their first foray into the mobile phone market with their K800 smartphone. It comes with a 4.5 inch screen, and a Medield Atom 1.6 GHz processor running Android 4.0. It’s the processor that really makes this handset distinctive: it’s essentially a shrunk-down PC processor, designed specifically for mobiles. The K800 is launching in China first, with no info about a UK release date as yet. Look out for a new range of Motorola phones using the same Atom chip this year, too.

 

Fujitsu’s Dunkable Phone

Fujitsu also launched a new Android machine, the F07D. The technical specs are nothing too special: 1.4 GHz processor running Android 2.3, with a 5 megapixel camera. What’s really impressive is the slimness of this device (6.7mm) and the fact that you can drop it in the bath or even some swimming pools without losing functionality. Yes, it’s fully waterproof, to a depth of 1.4m, for up to thirty minutes. With a bit of luck, that should even mean it’ll still work OK if you accidentally leave it in the garden overnight during a rainstorm, too. The clumsy or absent-minded – shouldn’t be ashamed of picking this phone: it has to be better than destroying a more expensive one every few months.

 

Sony’s Latest Xperia

Sony announced its newest Xperia model, the Xperia S. This is another top-of-the-range smartphone, with a staggeringly impressive 12 megapixel camera and a respectable dual-core 1.5 GHz processor. At present it only runs Android 2.3, but an upgrade to Android 4.0 is said to be on the cards for later this year.

 

Nokia Lumia 900 Launch

The long-rumoured Lumia 900 is basically a slightly upgraded Lumia 800, adding a front-facing camera to the critically acclaimed Windows Phone handset from Nokia. It’s intended for the US market, though, being LTE-compatible (Long Term Evolution: a 4G standard that’s unlikely to be rolled out in many other parts of the world anytime soon). So, we should probably expect some kind of new Lumia variant later this year, but it won’t quite be this Lumia 900.